Intel SSD 910 is PCI-based and impressive

The Intel SSD 910 is a solid-state drive that connects to the PCIe port instead of the regular hard drive SATA port. The benefit is immediate and quite spectacular: PCI offers higher bandwidth than SATA, and the next-generation PCIe will take things to the next-level. On paper, the Intel SSD 910 is already a monster in every way: it has 7X the read performance of the Intel SSD 710, and 5X the write speed. In terms of IO operations (IOPS) the 910 reaches 180k/75k where the SSD 710 got 38.5k/2.7k (that’s in read/write). This is extremely impressive.

Before you get too excited: the Intel SSD 910 is intended for enterprise usage. It is built to be easily integrated in servers, and it can easily beat 15k rpm mechanical disks for many/most things (although 15k drives are still very good for sequential writes, like for log files). In terms of power consumption, the Intel SSD 910 uses less than 25W while active, and 8-12W in idle mode.

It is available in 400GB ($1929) to 800GB ($3859) capacity. For an enterprise product with this level of performance, this doesn’t seem like a bad pricing, but the market will decide. In the meantime, I think that the numbers are very good, and the reliability specifications seem great as well.

If you’re looking for more affordable PCIe SSDs, you may check the OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 ($1580) – it’s not enterprise grade, but it’s “cheap” enough for wealthy consumers.